


Lovers' Knot

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [204]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angsty Schmoop, First Time, In Which Infinity War Never Happened, Intersex Loki (Marvel), M/M, Mention of Past Bad Breakup, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Reunion Sex, Schmoop, Sharing a Bed, Utterly Ridiculous Setup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:20:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It’s been a lifetime since they shared a bed.





	Lovers' Knot

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Spooning and Hotel. Prompts from this [generator](http://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com/promptsnsfw).

The bed isn’t big enough for both of them to stretch out, for Thor to take up his customary starfish or for Loki to unwind his full length from heels to head. It’s not small by any means, either; if there’s one thing the humans are usually good about, Loki muses, it’s impractical luxury. Impractical because so far as he can tell, this room is usually let to only one person and no person he’s ever met--except perhaps the very fetching Steve Rogers--could possibly need so much space solely for themselves.

He and Thor, however, such a bed was not designed for--even if it was called “king-sized.”

They both stare at it for a bit, their shoulders slumped, both of them worn out by hero-ing and very much in need of a sleep. And yet.

And yet, it’s been a lifetime since they shared a bed; why, they were hardly bigger than field mice back then, or so to Loki it seems. There were long years in their childhood--golden-hued even now in his memory--when he can’t remember a night spent alone, when every time he opened his arms to sleep, his brother was beside him, a warm lump under the covers no more than a hand’s breadth away. He had missed it, in the ages since: the ease with which he slept then, the way he’d never feared closing his eyes. That had changed, of course, after, as so many things had, but it’s not until they are standing beside a bed that is theirs just for the night in a human city called Vancouver that Loki realizes how much he wishes that it had not.

“Thor,” he says, reaching for the catch of his own cloak, “no rest will come from just looking. Take your gauntlets off and get into bed.”

Thor shakes his head. “It’s not big enough for both of us.”

“Of course it is.” Loki kicks off his boots, reaches up to unfasten his coat. “We’ll just have to be a bit close, that’s all.”

“It’s not--” Thor swallows and shakes his head again, that great stubborn thing. “I’ll sleep on the floor, all right? You can have the bed.”

“You can drop the self-sacrificing act. Truly. None of your Avenger brethren are around to take note.”

That gets Thor’s attention. And a hint of his ire. “Really, Loki. May I remind you on whose side you’ve fought today?”

Loki’s coat finds the floor. “I am well aware of my own failings, brother, but I find far more delight in pointing out yours. First you give up our seats on Tony Stark’s little plane--”

“The others were far more in need of a ride than you or I. If I wasn’t so spent, I could’ve had us back to the compound in no time. As could you.”

“Pah. The compound. A night spent in the company of heroes? Some reward that would be for leading the way against Amora, eh? No, thank you.” He was down to his underclothes now, a pair of tight silken shorts he’d grown rather fond of; another Midgardian nod to luxury. “And let’s not recount your stubborn refusal to let Stark give you some of the humans’ capital.”

“Money,” Thor says wearily. “They call it money.”

“Regardless of what it’s called, your lack of it is why we’re in this mess, isn’t it? Two gods and one bed. So I suggest, your highness, that you unwind yourself from your leathers and get into said bed before I change my mind and allow you to martyr yourself to this dreadful looking carpet.”

“Loki--”

Loki huffs and reaches for Thor’s collar, for the fastening he knows he’ll find there. “Fine. I’ll undress you myself.”

It’s only then that he gets a good look at his brother’s face.

It’s gaunt, Thor’s visage, battered by the powers of Amora’s magic--and why that witch dared to show her face on Earth, Loki still cannot fathom--his eyes pale and drained of the fervor that usually shines in them so brightly. But his cheeks, for all their recent pallor, are unmistakably flushed, and in his eyes there is evasion, something that looks very much like guilt.

Their gazes meet and Loki knows, oh how he knows, what is furrowing his brother’s brow, what memory has arisen to haunt him in this moment on the edge of clean sheets:

They’d been young men, then, no longer children. Old enough to know better. Old enough to understand precisely what they were doing and exactly why they shouldn’t, no matter how good it had felt.

“Thor,” Loki says now, far more gentle than he thought he knew how, his palm finding the curve of one broad, florid cheek. “Oh, my dear.”

Thor’s eyes flutter shut and Loki can picture it, as his brother does: those wide, green fields beyond the castle, hills that rolled--had they followed them long enough--to the very edges of Asgard. The sky above, a canopy of the universe, every star beaming its own brilliant light. What they had shared then was not a bed so like this, but a sleeping roll, one just broad enough to fit them both if they lay close, something they’d done a thousand times before.

Well. They had shared a bed a thousand times, but never, Loki thinks now, smoothing his thumb over Thor’s skin, had they ever lain quite so close.

The fault was shared between the both of them; that was the heart of the matter. If one had instigated and the other fallen in thrall, it would have been easier to dismiss, what had happened that night on the shores of a great silver lake. But Loki remembers Thor’s heart beating into his back, the way its drum kept the quick beat of his own; he remembers Thor’s mouth resting against the back of his neck, remembers his own willing arch back to meet it, the tangle of Thor’s hair in his hand, still damp from their day in the shoals.

“You,” Thor had murmured then, “are so very beautiful, Loki.” His hips were warm and snug against Loki’s ass, his cock a stirring, heated line whose very brush made Loki feel breathless. “How is it that I have never told you before?”

“Perhaps this is the first time you’ve noticed.”

A chuckle, the soft stroke of Thor’s hand on his stomach. “Oh, I assure you. It is not.”

Whose idea had it been to spoon together naked that night? Loki isn’t able to remember. Surely there was a reason, however foolhardy; some justification that felt enough right for them both to acquiesce without guilt or fear. But they had lain together only briefly--the fire was still burning, that he can recall--before he’d felt his own body bloom, the heat of his brother’s skin turning the core of him silken and slick.

Thor’s breath in his ear. That he remembers. The way it had fevered and pitched as Thor’s fingers crept downwards towards the part of him that ached.

Thor had stopped short, though, the hot tips of his fingers hesitating as he whispered: “May I? Tell me no and I will stop. I will not force you to--”

And Loki had snatched at the ox’s wrist and pulled Thor’s hand to his clit, pushed it to the soft clench beneath. “Yes,” he’d said then, the word barely audible over Thor’s low, hungry groan. “Yes, please. Touch me. _Yes_.”

It had been impossible to forget, of course, what it had been like to make love with Thor. For it had been an act of love for Loki; he had shared part of himself that night which had given to no other in all the years since. All those he had taken to bed, had allowed to take him--none had been worthy, no matter their beauty, of that which he held most dear: his heart.

“I love you,” he’d told Thor as his brother lapped at him, as he buried his face in the sweetest part of Loki’s flesh. “I love you so much.”

Thor had raised his head, his mouth and chin wet in the firelight. “You love my tongue, brother. That’s all.”

Loki had pulled at him, reached down with all his might and yanked until Thor was braced over him, his cock where his face had been. “I love _you_ , idiot,” he’d hissed, the words searing through a furious smile. “All of you, Hel help me.”

A dance of something uneasy across his brother’s broad face. “You don’t have to say such things.”

Loki had spread his thighs and wound his legs around Thor’s back. “I don’t have to do anything,” he’d panted. “And neither do you. But I swear, Thor Odinson, if you don’t fuck me now, I’ll do something to you all right.”

A snicker, a gorgeous pressure against the stretch of Loki’s cunt. “Oh, will you?” Thor had rumbled. “And what, pray tell, might that be?”

But Loki had kissed him then, had gathered a fistful of blond hair and tugged that smirking mouth to his and there was no smirking after that, no teasing: only a great, glorious race to devour the other, to summon up even greater pleasures; to lose themselves in each other’s touch and taste, the fierce, urgent crush of their flesh.

“Loki,” Thor says again, now, his voice full of shame. “I’m sorry.”

Something old and sad in Loki wavers; a feeling he’d long ago thought he’d lost. “For what?”

Thor’s hand is settled on his waist now, turned over silk and bare skin. “I was cruel to you after that, wasn’t I? The last time we shared a bed.”

“How so?”

“I told you never to speak of it again. I told you--that next morning, remember?--I called you the most horrible names.”

They lick at the curve of Loki’s ears, those names, and he can see again the shadows of the the awful look upon his brother’s face; the fury there, the fear at what they'd done, of its potential repercussions.

"Witch!" Thor had bellowed, his face firemoon red. "What have you done to me?"

Loki had stood there in the morning sun, disbelieving. "What have  _I_ done?" he spat. "Thor, do you really think yourself so easily led? You great stubborn ass! You've never done anything in your life that you didn't wish to."

"Exactly! You must have put something in my drink or--" He watched his brother struggle for words, grasping at the air as if the dawn itself held any answers--"or cast some sort of spell on me. Yes! You  _devourer_! You've summoned some power that Mother has taught you so that you might take what you wish."

Loki recoiled, horrified. "I--what?"

"You heard me," Thor said, warming to the awful implication. "You seduced me somehow, you--! Don't you understand? There are plans! Father and I have discussed. There is a path I am to follow on the way to the crown, and I can't--if Father knows that we've--"

The world seemed to be spinning, the ground under Loki's bare feet felt as if it would crack, and Thor's eyes--so dear the night before, so joyful and loving--were leaden thunderclouds, heavy with furious tears. For a long, terrible instant, Loki feared for his own sanity; surely the world had not upended itself so quickly and completely as that? And yet there was no doubt that the ardor of the darkened hours had splintered, fallen in shards at their feet, and in that moment, a lifetime ago, it felt as if all Loki had been, had believed himself to be, was crushed, too. Never mind love; never mind the peace that Thor's hands had brought him, the joy, the curve of that glorious mouth--now it was stretched thin, like the silence between them, and all because Thor wanted to be king.

Well.

Loki had held up his hands, a kind of peace treaty. "No one needs to know what has happened," he said quietly. "We can walk away from this night and never speak of it again."

Thor's expression flickered and for a moment, Loki thought he saw pain, a twin mirror of his own. "You have devoured me, witch." The invective again, leeched of its power. "Don't you understand that?"

"I've done no such thing." He took a step in the grass and stretched out a hand, let it hover in hesitation. "Thor, please. Let me--"

"No." The word a resolution. Thor turned away, the long line of his back the sharpest kind of rejection. "No. Leave me be."

Now, that same man tips his face against Loki's palm and sighs as if they'd never parted.

“Yes," Loki says simply, now. "You were terribly cruel."

“I was afraid."

“I know.”

“And young," Thor says. "And stupid.”

“You were all of those things," Loki says. "But you were also our father’s son. You feared him then.”

“And for a long time after.” Thor’s eyes find his again, deep blue like the finest sea. “I lied to myself, told myself that I feared him for your sake, that I feared what he’d do to you. But it was my own fate I was concerned with, brother. Not yours.”

Loki shakes his head. “Of that I am well aware. You were a selfish child, even then."

It's been so very long since Loki’s thought of that night, since he’s allowed himself to remember, and now, staring into his brother’s forlorn eyes, it’s hard to believe that he’d let himself forget.

“Odin is no excuse, though, for the way you treated me after. Not just the words you spoke, but the great and public effort you expended to push me away. You understand that, don’t you? Even fear at Father’s wrath is no justification.”

Thor’s voice is a sodden stone. “Yes. I know. Would it bring you any comfort to know that I’ve lived no day since without the pain I caused you biting at boundaries of my heart?” His fingers drift up Loki’s ribs and settle on the flat plain of his chest. “A pain just here that has not healed.”

He is warm, Loki’s brother, always has been; a living hearth to counter Loki’s coolness long before he knew the true nature of the blood in his veins. And he is warm now, in this strange place, a temporary refuge from the troubles of the Realms that are their responsibility now: two princes of Asgard left standing, each clutching the other; two brothers answerable to no one else’s commands. Tomorrow, they will be gods again; tonight, Loki decides, the wisdom of an instant, they will be lovers once more.

Without word or warning, he turns his hand into Thor’s hair and pulls in the same instant he lifts up his head and when their mouths collide, a kiss centuries in the remaking, Thor lets out a small, startled sound that falls like a dagger and pierces the last of the ice and then and then and then they are moving together, a dance that leaves each undone, that ends with Loki on his back and Thor’s hands on Loki’s hips, pins, that great weight focused on keeping Loki still until Thor gets what he wants.

“What is it you want, brother?” Loki says, his voice less purr than a plea. “Is it only to look?”

For Thor is staring, greedy, at the soft space between Loki’s thighs, his mouth just enough for Loki to squirm at the sight of his tongue.

“I thought I’d imagined it, somehow,” Thor says, “how lovely you are here. But _søt gudinne_ , I had not." He lets his breath loose in a gust. "You’re molten already, aren’t you? If I were not so hungry for your sweetness, I’d have you right now.”

The words are a tinder, the fresh strike of a match, and Loki writhes, the heat curling electric in his clit. “Don’t say such things,” he gets out, “unless you mean it.”

The shudder in Thor’s body is unmistakable; it threatens to unmoor the bed. “Loki,” he says, a warning.

“I could take you. I could.” He lifts his hips, or tries to, feels his lips pulse, his cunt ache. “I want nothing more than to be yours again, and--”

“And what?”

Loki smiles, finds his brother’s blue, smoky eyes and smiles again. “You can always eat me out after. Drink your fill of what you’ve spent in me.”

There is a roar in his head and without--Thor’s groans mixed with his own--and when the noise stills, he is full, perfect and glorious, and digging his nails into the back of Thor’s neck.

“I’m hurting you,” Thor pants, making no effort to slow his pace. “I must be. You’re so exquisitely tight.”

“No, you’re not.” A brush of lips on Thor’s cheek. “I like that I’m making you work for it.”

Thor presses their foreheads together. “You were like this on that night too. Do you remember?”

“Of course,” Loki murmurs. “You were my first. I was still learning what my body could do.”

Thor’s hips wrench, his cock driving in deep, and he whines, the pluck of a harp string. “Oh, fuck.”

Loki spears a hand through his brother’s curls. “Had you forgotten that? I think you had.”

“No, no, I--”

“What, darling?”

“I hadn’t let myself remember,” Thor says in his ear, voice wrecked by desire and guilt. “It hurt too fucking much to know what I had and what I’d let so easily go.”

“ _Thor_ \--”

Their mouths meet and their voices join and what Loki feels is something beyond himself, beyond his body; it’s as if a knot long left untied is sliding home again, pulling tight, each side of the rope growing equally tense, reaching for a perfect balance, forming a new sort of whole.

“Oh,” Thor cries out, his hips stuttering, stiff. “Oh, Loki, I’m going to--”

And then and then Loki is full to the brim, swimming in a punch of sweet heat, and before Thor’s cries have died he’s empty again but Thor is there, waiting, crouched now between Loki’s thighs, his tongue quick and eager, lapping away at his mess, and it does not take so very long for Loki to be broken, beautiful, his wails like shattered rainbows, Thor moaning happily against his clit, his big fingers stilling inside Loki, stilling, even as Loki’s cunt--his whole body--begins to shiver and shake.

They kiss again and touch again and come again, calling each other’s name, and when sleep arrives, that much-demanded visitor, they are curled together at the center of the bed in a nest of stained sheets and battered pillows: a lovers’ knot, they are.

And when they wake, there is no fear or anger, no cruelty tossed to cover confusion. Instead, they smile when they see each other, reach again for beloved flesh, and make love sleepily, lazily, until sleep comes for them again.

“We have to get up eventually,” Thor says later, peering towards the nightstand. “We only have this room until something o’clock; I wasn’t really listening last night. Perhaps we should call down and ask.”

Loki stirs his hand in the air and to his relief, he feels the familiar tingle of magic, hears the whisper of spells in his fingers. “Or,” he says, “I could see to it that we were undisturbed today and for another night, if you like.”

“Oh, your powers have--?”

“Yes.” Loki leans over and kisses the valley in Thor’s chest. “So have yours, I’d imagine. Which means you can zip us back to your Avengers playhouse, no doubt.”

Thor snorts. “So the choice is mine, is it? Duty or play?”

“You could think of it that way.”

His brother strokes a hand through his hair, fingers rubbing gently at Loki’s scalp. “I suppose,” he says, “if you think you can manage it, I wouldn’t be adverse to one more day here with you.”

There’s a barb on his tongue, truly there is, but the moment, the collision of the present, their past, catches up with Loki, knocks him over like a catch of shells on the beach, and what slips out is as true now as it was then, centuries of bad blood and misdeeds notwithstanding:

“I love you,” he says. Kisses Thor’s throat and says it again, chases it with his brother’s name. “Thor,” he murmurs against new, familiar skin. “Oh, Thor.”

Thor answers him with kisses, Thor answers him with sighs, Thor answers him one and the same:

“And I you,” he whispers as he eases in again, his handsome face ringed with the dawn, the promise of all that lies ahead. “Loki, I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote most of this in the AM but it was close enough to being whole that I wanted to give it that chance, so I returned to it tonight.


End file.
